Consider the amount of effort required to install, maintain, and enhance complex multiple vendor software systems. Now add the time associated with finding, moving, translating, and converting data stores to meet the requirements of each of those systems. This effort and the associated costs are often referred to as transaction costs. It is estimated that up to 50% of an oil company's technical resources (including information technology costs) are consumed by transaction costs. As the industry develops electronically enabled oil fields, including downhole monitoring systems, permanent seismic monitoring systems and remote controlled platforms and wells, cycle times must be reduced...